the words “my country” bring to his mind not merely some familiar
scenes of his childhood, but a series of vast pictures. They are broad
and simple in outline. “My country” is no tight little island shut out
from “the envy of less happier lands.” It is continental in its sweep.
It lies open and free to all. It is large and easy of access. There
is a vision of busy cities serving as its gateways. Behind them is a
pleasant home-like land with “a sweet interchange of hill and valley.”
Beyond the mountains another scene opens. We see the sources of the
strength of America and feel the promise of its future. To see the
Mississippi valley is to believe in “manifest destiny,” and to take a
cheerful view of it. To the ancient world the valley of the Nile was
the symbol of fertility. It is a narrow ribbon of green in the midst of
the desert. Here Plenty and Famine were in plain sight of one another.
There was always the suggestion of Pharaoh’s ugly dream of the lean
kine devouring the fat and well-favored. But in the valley of the
Mississippi the fear of the lean kine is dispelled. One may travel at
railroad speed day after day, and still the fields of wheat and corn
smile upon him. Here the ample land gives happy confidence to men’s
prayer for daily bread. And beyond the fertile prairies “my country”
stretches in high plains and lofty mountain ranges. Here are new
treasures waiting bold spirits who claim them. The land has a challenge
and an invitation.
What a weary dearth
Of the homes of men! What a wild delight
Of space, of room! What a sense of seas
Where seas are not! What salt-like breeze!
What dust and taste of quick alkali!
And beyond the mountains lies the American Avilion, where never--
wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep-meadow’d, happy, fair with orchard lawns
And bowery hollows: crown’d with summer seas.
And this great land is one; though it is “a nation of nations” it has
achieved a national consciousness. There is an atmosphere about it all
which we recognize. To breathe it is an exhilaration. One loves to
think of it as the land of “the large and charitable air.”
* * * * *
The conception of the continental proportions of America did not
at once dawn upon its new inhabitants. They thought and spoke as
transplanted Englishmen. Each of the thirteen States was a tight little
republic insisting on its own rights. Each plucky Diogenes sat in its
own tub, saying to its neighbors, “Get out of my sunshine!”
It was only as they turned westward that Americans discovered
America,--a discovery which in some instances has been long delayed.
“The West” is not merely a geographical expression, it is a state of
mind which is most distinctive of the national consciousness. It is
a feeling, an irresistible impulse. It is the sense of undeveloped
resources and limitless opportunities. It is associated with the verb
“to go.” To the American the West is the natural place to go to, as
the East is the place to come from. It is synonymous with freedom from
restraint. It is always “out West.”
Just where the geographical West begins it is not necessary to
indicate. On the coast of Maine you may be shown a summer cottage
and told that it belongs to a rich Westerner from Massachusetts.
Massachusetts is not thought of as exactly the Far West, but it is far
enough.
The psychological West begins at the point where the centre of
interest suddenly shifts from the day before yesterday to the day
after to-morrow. Great expectations are treated with the respect that
elsewhere had been reserved for accomplished facts. There is a stir in
the air as if Humanity were a new family just setting up housekeeping.
What a fine house it is, and how much room there is on the ground
floor! What a great show it will make when all the furniture is in!
There is no time now for the finishing touches, but all will come in
due order. There is need for unskilled labor and plenty of it. Let
every able-bodied man lend a hand.
One does not know his America until he has been touched by the Western
fever. He must be possessed by a desire to take up a claim and build
himself a shack and invest in a corner lot in a Future Great City. He
must be capable of a disinterested joy in watching the improvements
which other people are making. Let the man of the East cling to the
old ways and seek out the old landmarks. The symbol of the West is the
plank sidewalk leading out from a brand-new prairie town and pointing
to a thriving suburb which as yet exists only in the mind of its
projector. There is something prophetic in that sidewalk on which the
foot of man has never trod.
One who has once had this fever never completely recovers. Though he
may change his environment he is always subject to intermittent attacks.
I remember on my first evening in Oxford sitting blissfully on the top
of a leisurely tram car that trundled along High Street. The dons in
academic garb were on their way to dinner in the college halls, and
they looked just as my imagination had pictured them. I was introduced
to one of them. When he learned that I was an American, there was a
sudden thaw in his manner.
“Have you ever been in Dodge City, Kansas?” he inquired eagerly.
I modestly replied that I had only passed through on the railway, but
I was familiar with other Kansas towns, and, reasoning from analogy,
I could tell what manner of place it was. This was enough. I had
experienced the West. I was one of the initiated. I could enter into
that state of mind represented by the term Dodge City. It appeared
that in the golden age, when he and Dodge City were both young, he
had sought his fortune for some months in Kansas. He had experienced
the joys of civic newness, a newness such as had not been in England
since the Heptarchy. He discoursed of the mighty men of those days
when every man did what was right in his own eyes, and good-humoredly
allowed his neighbor to do likewise. As we parted, he said, with
mournful acquiescence in his present estate, “Oxford does very well,
you know, but it isn’t Dodge City.” If poetry is emotion remembered in
tranquillity, what could be more poetical than Dodge City remembered in
the tranquillity of Oxford quadrangles?
In this case the poetical view was a sound one. The traveler across
the newly developed States of the West has the traveler’s license to
contrast unfavorably that which he sees with that which he left behind
him in his home country. He may say a dozen uncomplimentary things, and
each one of them may be true. He may exhaust all his stock adjectives,
as “crude” and “raw” and the like. But when he remarks, as did a
certain critic, that because the country lacks “distinction” it is
uninteresting, he betrays his own limitations.
It is just that lack of distinction that makes America interesting.
Here, no longer distracted by what is exceptional, one may take the
welfare of the masses of men seriously.
Here the doings of men correspond to the broad doings of the day and
the night,
Here is what moves in magnificent masses, careless of particulars.
When Shelley was an undergraduate he was attracted to a lecture on
mineralogy. It seemed to him a subject full of poetical suggestiveness.
His expectations were disappointed, and he unceremoniously bolted
and returned to his room. “What do you think the man talked about?
Stones!--stones!--stones! I tell you stones are not interesting--in
themselves.”
Shelley was right. Stones are not interesting in themselves; neither
are railroads, nor stockyards, nor new unpainted buildings, nor endless
cornfields. But for that matter, neither are crumbling columns, nor
old manuscripts, nor the remains of feudal castles interesting--in
themselves. Things become interesting only when seen in relation to the
people whose thoughts they have stimulated and whose imaginations they
have stirred.
America is a fresh field for human endeavor. Here are men busily making
roads, bridging rivers, building new cities. They have been given the
task of subduing a continent. But in such conflicts with Nature the
conquered influences the conquerors. What impress does the continent
make upon the minds of the hardy men who are mastering it? What visions
of the future do they see which transform their drudgery into an heroic
adventure?
In the case of the older nations such questions about the beginnings
and the ideals of the beginners cannot be answered. The formative
period, with all its significant aspirations, is buried in oblivion.
“Who thinks any more as they thought?” we ask in regard to the pioneer
of Britain. Poetry has license to picture him as a knight in armor and
to tell how in romantic fashion he pitched
His tents beside the forest. And he drave
The heathen, and he slew the beast, and felled
The forest, and let in the sun.
It was all a long time ago, and the men who did these things are not
clearly revealed. Not being able to get at their ideals, we attribute
to them those which we think appropriate.
The historians are troubled by their lack of authentic material. They
are like the magicians, astrologers, sorcerers, and Chaldeans of the
court of Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar had a dream that he knew was
very important, but before he could get it interpreted by his wise men
he forgot what it was. They were good at interpretations, and could
have made one to fit if only the king had brought the dream with him so
that they could try it on. But that was the very thing he could not do.
The founders of London and Paris had doubtless their dreams of the
future; but alas! they have long since been forgotten. But Chicago
has not had time to forget. Everything is still vivid. Men walk the
streets of the great city who remember it when it was no bigger than
the Londinium of the time of the Cæsars. They have with their own eyes
watched every step in the civic development and they have been a part
of all that they have seen. The Londoner has seen only a passing phase
of his London; the greater part of its history is received on hearsay
evidence. The Chicagoan sees his Chicago steadily and sees it whole. No
wonder that there is a self-consciousness about the new metropolis that
is not to be found in the old. Its greatness has been thrust upon it
suddenly, and there is a full realization of its value.
The genuine American who is the maker of the new fortunes of the world,
and who is in love with his work, has not been adequately portrayed
in literature. It requires an ample imagination to do justice to
his character. There must be a mingling of realism and romance. The
realism must not be the minute, painstaking portraiture of a Miss
Austen, but the hearty, out-of-door reality of a Fielding. The American
Fielding has not yet appeared, but what a good time he will have when
he comes! What a host of characters after his own heart he will find!
The American Scott, too, is called for to give us a story of American
life which will read as well on the edge of a clearing in the forest
as “The Lady of the Lake” did in the trenches of Torres Vedras, when
the soldiers forgot the enemy’s shells as they gave a glorious shout
over the poet’s lines, which their captain was reading to them. I like
that story, in spite of the fact that a recent critic declares that to
like it shows an uncultivated taste. “This is not,” he says, “a test of
poetry. An audience less likely to be critical, a situation less likely
to induce criticism, can hardly be imagined.” Nevertheless, Scott would
much rather have written lines that rang true to soldiers in the hour
of battle, than to have been given a high mark by the most competent
corrector of daily themes.
The imagination of Hawthorne, brooding over the past, repeopled the
House of the Seven Gables with the successive generations. But there is
another kind of romance, in which the imagination is projected into the
future. Looking at the new house not yet enclosed against the storm, it
dreams dreams and sees visions. There is a story there, also, and the
best of it is that it is to be continued.
* * * * *
A shrewd old New England farmer recounted to me the warlike exploits
of his family. He himself had been in Gettysburg, and each generation
since the time of the French and Indian wars had had its soldier. His
son had been shot at Santiago. “The bullet went clean through his
body,” he said, indicating a course which seemed to me necessarily
fatal. I expressed sympathy. “Oh, it didn’t hurt him much,” he said,
“it seemed to go through a vacant spot.”
That there are vacant spots in the character of the typical man of
the Western world no one would be more ready to admit than he. His
shortcomings are obvious. Yet most of those which have been harshly
commented upon by the world are of the kind that might be commended to
the consideration of the kindly Pardoner. Some of his weaknesses touch
upon nobleness. Those who best know his environment and the work he has
done are most ready to grant him a reasonable degree of indulgence.
The most serious charges against him are that he is a boastful
materialist enamored of crude bulk, and that he has trampled upon the
old sanctities and is a worshiper of the almighty dollar. There is
some color for these charges in his manners, but those who make them
have certainly not understood his spirit. “The Western Goth,” Lowell
called him. The Goths had a bad reputation once as wanton destroyers
of ancient art. But after they had had their fling and had settled
down, the Teutonic barbarians showed that they could make a thing or
two themselves. Gothic has long since ceased to be a term of reproach.
Even in the destruction of the ancient, archæologists now admit that
the Goths did not do as much harm as was at first feared. The real
destroyers of ancient Rome have been the Romans.
From the fact that western America is a place where people are actively
engaged in making money, and that they find their work so interesting
that they like to talk about it, the superficial observer jumps at the
conclusion that this is the seat of the cult of wealth-worship. But
there is a vast difference between making a thing and worshiping it. It
is reported that one of the varied industries of Great Britain is the
manufacture of molten images. It is undoubtedly a sin, but the British
manufacturer comforts himself with the reflection that he only breaks
half the commandment; he makes the idol, but he does not bow down
before it.
Worship is not talkative or boastful. It is reserved and self-abasing.
The worshiper accepts the superiority of the object of his devotion
as a fact not to be questioned. For such serious-minded worship of
wealth go to the English moral tales so popular a generation or two
ago, before the wave of democracy came in. Then the affluent Squire and
his lady were lifted into the place of superior beings. They dispensed
bounty after the manner of Providence to their poorer neighbors, and
there was no thought of questioning their ways. They were rich, as had
been their fathers and mothers before them, and all other virtues were
attributed to them by fond superstition.
The men of the Western mining camps, where millionaires are made in
a day, have no conception of such a reverential attitude toward the
possessor of wealth. When you see them in the eager pursuit of dollars,
you are watching not their religion, but their sport. They care for
money as the fox-hunter cares for the fox. They admire the man who wins
the prize, in proportion to the skill and pluck which he has exhibited.
But there are no illusions of a personal superiority imparted by
the possession of property. That is impossible in a community where
everybody is acquainted with the short and simple annals of the rich.
The man who is conspicuously successful in the national sport
is undoubtedly an object of interest, but it is interest of the
superficial sort. He is not the man whom the people delight to honor,
and he usually has the good sense to know it. In a Western newspaper
my attention was attracted by the headlines: “Noah a Millionaire.” It
seems that some one had calculated that, even after making allowance
for the low price of labor and materials in his day, the Ark must
have cost over half a million dollars, and that Noah must have had
at least a million in order prudently to undertake the work. It put
the patriarch in a fresh light, and I read the article diligently, as
did most of my fellow passengers on the train. But that was the end
of it; our opinions about diluvian and antediluvian matters remained
unchanged. I suppose that the publicity given to the doings of our
conspicuously rich contemporaries has no greater significance.
The millionaire who cares for the admiration of his fellow-citizens
must do more than accumulate. When he has made his fortune the next
question is, “What will he do with it?” He must do something or sink
into the rank of nobodies. Even the most selfish and parsimonious feels
that something is required of him. A great part of the stream of new
wealth may be wasted, so far as the higher interests of society are
concerned, but a certain part of it is pretty certain to be directed
toward those same higher interests. The process is like that which goes
on with an hydraulic ram. Where there is a good stream of water, one
can afford to lose most of it. The waste water, before it escapes down
the hill, pumps a slender but sufficient stream into the second story.
Indeed, it is the interest of our millionaires in art, science, and
religion which has created a puzzling ethical problem. They are not
content to be mere money-getters. They aspire to be benefactors on a
large scale. But what if the wealth so freely offered has not been
honestly come by? What if the best institutions should hesitate to
receive it? The poor rich man cannot contemplate such a refusal with
equanimity. It would interfere with the fulfillment of his most
cherished plans. To have unlimited opportunities to make money, and
to be hindered in giving it away, seems to him like building a trunk
line of railroad and then being denied terminal facilities. Of course
he could change his plans and keep it all himself, but to a man who
had been accustomed to “doing things” that would be a humiliating
anti-climax.
* * * * *
The fact that the American is greatly absorbed in his work with
material things is no sufficient basis of the charge of materialism
that is lightly brought against him. The crucial question is, “What
do the things stand for in his mind? Are they finalities, or are they
means to an end?” The most appalling picture of a purely materialistic
civilization is that given in the book of the Revelation. It is an
inventory of the wealth of the Babylon which was Imperial Rome. The
inventory is an indictment. “The merchandise of gold, and silver, and
precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk,
and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and
all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and
marble, and cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and
wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and
horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men.”
The heart grows sick when the list of commodities ends with the “souls
of men.” What were they worth, measured against all that goes before?
A very different impression comes as we read Joaquin Miller’s exultant
cry over the West:--
O heart of the world’s heart, West! my West!
Look up! Look out! There are fields of kine,
There are clover fields that are red as wine,
* * * * *
There are emerald seas of corn and cane,
* * * * *
There are isles of oak and a harvest plain
Where brown men bend to the bending grain,
There are temples of God and towns new born.
* * * * *
And the hearts of oak and the hands of horn
Have fashioned them all, and a world beside.
This frank delight in the riches of the earth is not materialistic.
The souls of men are not in the market. They form the supreme standard
of value. Materialism is not a disease to which nations are subject in
their lusty youth. It comes with senile decay.
Sometimes when we are wearied with the intense activity of modern life
we quote the saying, “Things are in the saddle.” Perhaps our sympathy
is misplaced. If the poor Things could speak, they would tell us that,
so far from being in the saddle, they are under the lash of furious
young idealists who give them no rest. It is the nature of a Thing to
“stay put,” but these headstrong youths despise this conservative bias.
They are no respecters of Things, being wholly absorbed in Purposes.
To see Things in undisputed possession, go into “the best room” of
a respectable old farmhouse. Here the Thing has the place of honor,
and the Person is a base intruder, having no rights of his own. The
priestess hovers occasionally around her sacred Things, waving her
feather duster as a mystic wand, and then leaves them in respectful
gloom. Nothing short of a death in the family would induce her to
disturb them. Go into a busy workshop, and you may see how the Thing
may be taught to know its place. It is always at the mercy of the
innovating Intelligence. When a new Idea comes, the old Thing which had
heretofore had a useful function is thrown aside. It is still as good
as it ever was, but it is not good enough. It must go to the scrap pile.
* * * * *
The man of the West is likely to offend against the standards of
propriety in speech. When he begins to explain the character of
his country, he is accused of inaccuracy. His prospectus is not
always confirmed by the Table of Contents. He has acquired the habit
of “talking large.” This prejudices many people against him. They
accuse him of willful exaggeration, and if he be the promoter of some
commercial enterprise, they impute to him a mercenary motive.
But he is in reality quite sincere. If he talks large, it is only
because he feels large. His is a language natural to those who are
engaged in creative work, and who foresee great things. It is like “the
large utterance of the early gods.” He does not feel called upon to
limit his statements to the facts that are already apparent; he expects
the facts to grow up to his statements. He is not shooting at a fixed
target, but at a flying mark; if he is to hit it, he must aim a little
ahead.
Another reason for this large utterance is that in a new country the
ordinary man identifies himself with his community in a way impossible
to any but very great magnates in an old civilization. He feels very
much as did the kings and earls he has read about. How proudly on the
Shakespearean stage a great noble will speak of himself as Norfolk or
Northumberland! It is as if his personality had been multiplied by so
many square miles. He is no longer a mere individual,--he is a whole
county.
An American may have much the same sense of territorial aggrandizement
by identifying himself with a promising community in its first stage
of growth. He is not a unit lost in a multitude. His town has a fine
name and a glorious future. Some day these glories may be divided among
thousands, now they are his own. He is proud of the town, and the pride
is more satisfying because he is it.
I once camped for a whole month in the city of Naples on the shores
of the Pacific. I knew it was a city, for a huge sign announced the
fact to every one who passed by the beautiful, secluded spot. Unlike
some of the boom towns of that period, Naples had an inhabitant, whom
I had occasion frequently to meet. When I addressed him, it was hard
for me to use his surname, as I would with a common man. For to me he
was Naples. It would have seemed appropriate for him to speak in blank
verse.
* * * * *
There are those who look upon the Western delight in the idea of
bigness as an evidence of vulgarity of sentiment and of the lack of
idealism. They have a scorn of those who habitually think of quantity
rather than of quality. But the man of fastidious taste should not be
allowed to have it all his own way. One poet may be inspired by “the
murmur of a hidden brook in the leafy month of June.” But another may
prefer to stand on the shore of the ocean and feel its immensity. He is
tremendously impressed by its size. It is a big thing. But the ocean is
as poetical as the brook, though in its own huge way.
There are some things wherein quality is the first consideration. They
are the luxuries of life. But when we come to the prime necessities,
the first question is in regard to the adequacy of the supply. When a
sentimental young lady was seated at dinner next to a great poet, she
waited, awestruck, for him to give utterance to a fine thought. The
only gem he vouchsafed was, “How do you like your mutton? I like mine
in hunks.” The poet was a man of sound sense. There is one law for
poetry and another for mutton. Poetry is precious, and a little goes a
long way; we can get on without any but the best. But mutton should be
served more generously.
It is the glory of the West that it treats what elsewhere are the
luxuries of the few as the necessities of the many. It dispenses even
“the higher education” not in dainty morsels, but in hunks.